Yet the commodities which these Dutchmen brought to Deshima to be exchanged there or to be presented to the Shogun at Yedo, gave the Japanese who came in contact with them some idea about the modes of life in Europe. Moreover, after the encouragement assiduously given to the study of things European by the Shogun Yoshimune, whose rule covered the greater part of the first half of the eighteenth century, the process of infiltration of Western culture through the narrow door of Nagasaki had become suddenly accelerated. As the encouragement had been induced by the material necessities of the nation, the study of that time about things European was naturally limited to those sciences which were indispensable to the daily life of the people and at the same time far from being spiritual, like astronomy, medicine, botany, and so forth. Would it be possible, however, to ward off successfully the spiritual side of a culture, while taking in the material side of the same with avidity, as if the two parts had not been interwoven inseparably as a single entity? Those branches of Western knowledge, which we did not welcome in the least, but which were none the less useful, as history, and political as well as military sciences became gradually known to the Japanese, though very fragmentarily and slowly. That the diplomatists of the Shogunate had been able to conclude with the foreign powers, which forced our doors to be opened to them against our will, treaties which, though evidently detrimental to our national honour, were the largest concessions we could obtain from them at that time, shows that they had not been entirely ignorant of the condition of the parties with which they had to treat. Probably there are foreign readers who may entertain some doubt about the lack of the religious element in the Western civilisation which thus flowed into our country from the first half of the eighteenth century. They may well consider, however, the change of religious temperament both in Japan and in European countries, besides the strictest prohibition rigorously exercised by the Japanese authorities. The Thirty Years War, the beginning of which falls in the fourteenth year of the Shogunate of Hidetada, the son and successor of Iyeyasu, is said generally to be the last religious war in Europe fought seriously. But it cannot be denied that in the latter part of the long war, more political than religious elements predominated, and the age which followed the most desolatory war was characterised by its religious toleration. Could the Dutchmen, who were the only people privileged to trade with us, have been expected to set as their first aim the propagation of the Christianity of their Reformed Church rather than material gain by their commerce, as the Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians are said to have done as regards their Catholicism at the end of the Ashikaga period?